[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 81 (Tuesday, May 11, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2423-S2424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, ``infrastructure,'' ``court packing,'' 
``crisis,'' ``Jim Crow,'' ``bipartisan''--all words that we recognize, 
all words with fixed, long-established meanings, and all words whose 
meanings are currently being twisted unrecognizably.
  In the brave new world of the Biden administration, the Democratic 
Congress, the plain meaning of language is no longer so plain.
  Take the term ``infrastructure.'' Ask anybody what they think of when 
they think of infrastructure, and I can guarantee what they will tell 
you: roads, bridges, waterways, maybe airports. I can also tell you 
what they won't think of: Medicaid expansion, support for Big Labor, 
free community college.
  Why? Because none of those things has ever been part of the 
definition of ``infrastructure,'' until now. Now Democrats are claiming 
that infrastructure is pretty much whatever they want it to be.
  One Democratic Senator tweeted:

       Paid leave is infrastructure. Childcare is infrastructure. 
     Caregiving is infrastructure.

  Well, actually, no, they are not. Those are policy proposals--
proposals that could be discussed, but they are not infrastructure. 
Saying something is infrastructure doesn't make it so.
  And, unfortunately, Democrats' redefinition of infrastructure, as 
Orwellian as it is, is actually less alarming than some of Democrats' 
other attempts at linguistic redefinition.
  Take court packing. Everyone who has ever sat through an American 
history class knows exactly what court packing refers to--expanding the 
number of Justices on the Supreme Court so that you can get the Supreme 
Court decisions that you want.
  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed it in the 1930s, and it 
was defeated by a bipartisan majority of Senators. And most thought the 
idea had been consigned to the ash heap of history, until Democrats 
resurrected it during the Trump administration.
  Upset by the Court's current makeup and worried that the Court might 
not rubberstamp Democratic policies, a growing number of Democrats are 
getting behind the idea of court packing.
  But, of course, they are eager to escape the negative connotations of 
the

[[Page S2424]]

term. After all, President Roosevelt's Court-packing attempt is not 
exactly regarded as a shining moment of his Presidency. And so in a 
move worthy of Orwell's ``Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' Democrats are asking 
us to accept the fantastical notion that Republicans packed the Court--
indeed, packed the entire judiciary--and that Democrats are merely 
seeking to restore balance.
  Yes, in the Democrats' brave new world, the President performing his 
constitutional duty to nominate judges and Justices, and a Senate duly 
confirming them, is now defined as a nakedly partisan power grab akin 
to President Roosevelt's attempt to secure a favorable outcome for his 
policies from the Supreme Court.
  I should say a Republican President fulfilling his constitutional 
duty and a Republican Senate confirming his nominees because we all 
know--we all know that if it were President Biden who had filled 
multiple seats on the Supreme Court and succeeded in having a lot of 
judges confirmed, his actions would not be regarded as Court packing; 
they would be regarded correctly as business as usual. That is what we 
do around here. They would be regarded correctly as a President doing 
his job and performing his constitutional duty.
  Then there is Jim Crow. Americans know what ``Jim Crow'' means. It 
refers to the reprehensible period of segregation, when Black Americans 
were forced to live as second-class citizens and denied the equal 
protection of the laws.
  ``Jim Crow'' is one of the great stains on our country's history, and 
it is a term that should not be used lightly, but that is exactly what 
Democrats are doing.
  They decided that it suits their purposes to call to mind the history 
of this word, and so they have applied the term to an ordinary, 
mainstream election reform bill in Georgia.
  In fact, the President went so far as to call the Georgia law ``Jim 
Crow on steroids,'' as if it would not only bring us back to the era of 
segregation but return us to something even worse.
  And all this for an election law that is squarely in the mainstream 
when it comes to State election laws and in some ways is more 
permissive than election laws in presumably utopian Democratic-led 
States like New York.
  I could go on.
  There are Democrats' attempts to redefine ``bipartisan'' from 
something that is supported by both parties in Congress to something 
that is maybe--maybe--supported by some Republican voters in some poll, 
no matter how dubious its reliability.
  Or there is the White House's contorted refusal to call the situation 
at our southern border a crisis, as if by refusing to use the word they 
could somehow change the reality of the situation.
  But let me ask a question. Why is the plain meaning of language under 
assault by the Democratic Party? Why are Democrats dramatically 
redefining ordinary words and concepts?
  Well, maybe it is because reality isn't so pretty. Take court 
packing. The truth is that Democrats are afraid that the current 
Supreme Court is not going to rule the way Democrats want in cases they 
care about. So they want to expand the Supreme Court and let President 
Biden nominate new Justices so they can guarantee the outcomes that 
they want.
  But saying that doesn't sound so great. In fact, it sounds more 
autocratic than democratic. So Democrats are attempting to disguise the 
real reason behind their partisan court-packing plan by applying the 
word ``Court packing'' not to their own attempts to pack the Court but 
to the ordinary work of the President and the Congress.
  Or take infrastructure. Pretty much everybody supports 
infrastructure. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't 
thinking the government should maintain our roads and bridges.
  It would be a lot easier, on the other hand, to find people who think 
that maybe government shouldn't be in the business of substantially 
increasing spending or expanding into new areas of Americans' lives.
  So Democrats have chosen to disguise their plans for massive 
government spending and government expansion under the heading of 
``infrastructure.'' After all, everybody supports infrastructure.
  So if they can sell their plans for government expansion as 
infrastructure, then they might be able to implement a lot of proposals 
that otherwise might not make it through Congress
  Or take Jim Crow. With H.R. 1 and S. 1, Democrats are pushing to pass 
an election law that would federalize elections, inject a massive dose 
of partisanship into our election system, and give Democrats what they 
hope will be a permanent advantage in elections going forward, but 
obviously they can't say that. They can't suggest that we pass H.R. 1 
to improve Democrats' electoral chances so they have had to find 
another reason to push Americans to pass this bill.
  And so they have manufactured a crisis--States are passing dangerous 
election laws that harken back to Jim Crow, and we need the Democrats' 
election bill to save the day.
  Sometimes I wonder when the President is bashing the Georgia election 
law if he remembers that the legislature that passed that law was 
elected by the same voters who gave him the victory in Georgia and sent 
two Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Does he really want to call those 
voters racist?
  Ultimately, Democrats' assault on language is about power. Change the 
language, and you can change the outcome and secure your political 
control.
  It is no coincidence that oppressive regimes have cracked down on 
speech and redefined it to suit their purposes or that they manufacture 
crises to keep the people in need of government.
  The problem for Democrats is that there is no mandate for Democrats' 
far-left agenda. Democrats' radical socialist candidates couldn't even 
make it through the Democratic primary, let alone the general election. 
President Biden won the Democrat primary and the election in large part 
because he campaigned, perhaps disingenuously, as a moderate. And as 
for Congress, Democrats lost seats in the House and have a paper-thin 
majority in both Chambers. If there was any mandate to be gathered from 
November, it was a mandate for moderation.

  But Democrats aren't interested in moderation. They are increasingly 
enthralled with the far-left wing of their party, and they have a 
radical agenda to push and possibly a very limited window to push it. 
And since there is no mandate for that agenda, they have to create one.
  That is why you see Democrats redefining the very plain meaning of 
common words. Say that you don't like the makeup of the Supreme Court, 
and most Americans would say: Tough, that is the way the ball bounces 
sometimes in our democracy.
  Claim that Republicans engaged in court packing, on the other hand, 
and all of a sudden Democrats' radically partisan Supreme Court power 
grab seems a lot more acceptable.
  I get Democrats' passion for their politics. I feel pretty strongly 
about my political principles. But their manipulation of language to 
advance their politics is deeply disturbing. Instead of trying to 
pursue a radical agenda cloaked in misleading language, I suggest 
Democrats turn their efforts to bipartisan cooperation. As the November 
election made clear, that is what the American people are looking for.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority whip is recognized.